IntroductionFootnote *
This paper discusses the development of the Ashkenazi meat hall in Amsterdam between 1673 and 1815. Similarly to other minorities in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Amsterdam, Jews had to take care of their own poor,Footnote 1 and barely received municipal financial support for welfare provision.Footnote 2 Although each community was responsible for its own welfare system, the Jews were under higher pressure than their Christian counterparts to maintain their own poor, receiving less municipal support. Moreover, communal warnings against begging in the city testify to the effect the mass poverty within the Ashkenazi (High German Jewish) community had on the city.Footnote 3 Yet, some poor Jews did make use of the municipal welfare system, such as hospitals. Presumably, the welfare challenge eventually acted as a catalyst for welfare regulation by the government as well, leading to the renewed welfare system in the late eighteenth century.Footnote 4
Thanks to the Meat Hall, the Ashkenazi community was able to take care of its own poor people, maintain their religious communal identity, and preserve proper relations with the government.Footnote 5 In order to be able to do this, the Ashkenazi community in Amsterdam gained a unique formal status from the Amsterdam Municipality: a monopoly for selling kosher meatFootnote 6 to community members. In return for the monopoly status, the community leadership was allowed to levy an indirect meat tax, a regime that was in effect from 1673 until 1808. This tax was used to support the Ashkenazi welfare system.Footnote 7 It is important to note that this indirect tax was different from the tithe and was meant solely for poor relief. Consequently, the Ashkenazi Meat Hall was a central source of income for the communal welfare system.Footnote 8 The meat hall was administered by the Parnasim (lay leaders) and lay at the intersection of welfare provision, religious regulation, and relations with the municipality. Therefore, its development offers a particularly revealing perspective on communal authority in Ashkenazi Amsterdam.
The current study uses a theoretical lens to analyze the historical development of the Ashkenazi meat hall. This unorthodox approach allowed us to gain nuanced insights we may not have been able to achieve otherwise into the evolution of the meat hall, from its inception to its demise. We analyzed the dynamics of the pragmatic, moral, and cognitive legitimacyFootnote 9 of the Ashkenazi Meat Hall as an instrument of funding poverty relief in Amsterdam. Using modern terms such as communal organizations to describe this historic phenomenon, we provide a framework to analyze the shifts in practice as well as in positioning, which changed (forms of) legitimacy.Footnote 10 Moreover, the terms function as a conceptual bridge between the historical case study and contemporary theories used to analyze it.
Extensive documentation reveals patterns in the meat hall’s interactions with two key stakeholders: the broader Ashkenazi community and Amsterdam’s municipal government. We focus on the Ashkenazi meat hall for a few additional reasons. The first reason is its essential role in supporting the communal welfare system via a meat tax and ensuring the consumption of Kosher meat according to the Halacha laws. Secondly, the Ashkenazi community and its meat hall have received less academic attention than its Portuguese counterpart (the dominant Jewish group in Amsterdam). This was partly due to limited sources—an issue recently addressed to some extent by Reshef and Gutschow, who created a dataset of relevant archival sources in Yiddish.Footnote 11 Moreover, the Ashkenazi community was younger, poorer, and subordinate to the Portuguese community,Footnote 12 which offers valuable additional insights into the complex layers of legitimacy.
This study’s primary contribution lies in tracing changing patterns of legitimacy surrounding the Ashkenazi meat hall over time. Using Suchman’s interconnected mechanisms of pragmatic, moral, and cognitive legitimacy, we looked into external (governmental) and internal (community) legitimacy dynamics.Footnote 13 Our findings reveal that weak internal legitimacy increases an organization’s vulnerability to external shocks and necessitates ongoing external support, raising the threshold for external legitimacy.Footnote 14 To survive, organizations such as the meat hall must adapt to changing social and political realities.
Moreover, this research reveals how certain strategies employed by the meat hall itself presumably undermined its legitimacy since communal organizations can be seen as “active participants in defining the conditions that generate, or undermine, their legitimacy.”Footnote 15 Analyzing approximately 150 years of rich archival materials, this research provides insights into organizational change and the dynamics of creating, preserving, and repairing legitimacy in eighteenth-century religious and communal organizations.
Historical Background
In the 1590s, the first Jews arrived in Amsterdam. They were Portuguese Jews, also known as Sephardic, or “New Christians”: descendants of Iberian Jews who had been compelled by the Catholic Portuguese monarchy to convert to Christianity. The conversos were suspected by contemporary Portuguese of remaining loyal to their Jewish identity domestically and practicing Christianity in public spaces and church, yet there is insufficient historical evidence to support this. Since 1602, a gradually increasing number of Portuguese immigrants in Amsterdam identified openly as Jewish.Footnote 16 These Portuguese Jews had considerable financial resources and commercial connections with Spain and Portugal.Footnote 17
The first Ashkenazim arrived in Amsterdam in the early seventeenth century. Insecure conditions and economic difficulties in German and Eastern European areas, such as Poland and Lithuania, encouraged Jewish migration westward. These Ashkenazi Jews perceived Holland as a favored destination. Compared with their wealthy Portuguese counterparts, the Ashkenazim initially struggled with limited financial resources and faced less favorable reception. Some worked with wealthy Portuguese Jews in the tobacco and diamond industries, while others sustained themselves as peddlers or kosher butchers.Footnote 18
The Ashkenazim preserved knowledge of Jewish-religious practices which the Sephardim had lost as a result of the Inquisition and compulsory conversions.Footnote 19 Yet, they were less wealthy and less cosmopolitan compared to the Sephardim, and some even had a reputation of petty criminals. The Portuguese considered them to be poor and culturally inferior.Footnote 20 The communities differed in their interpretations of Jewish law ( Halacha ), prayer styles ( Nusah ),Footnote 21 and kosher slaughtering rules ( Shechita ).Footnote 22 These distinctions led to social separation between the two groups: they seldom married each other, and if they did, this often led to a loss of their communal membership. Moreover, once the Ashkenazi community had to establish its own institutions around 1639, each group forbade its members to pray at the other’s synagogue or purchase meat at the other’s meat hall.Footnote 23 The first Ashkenazim of Amsterdam originated mostly from the lower strata of German Jewry. They were not allowed to formally register with the Portuguese congregations. However, they were allowed to pray in the Portuguese synagogues and use the Sephardic cemetery in Ouderkerk until 1635. Thereafter, they were permitted to manage their own communal religious services. When the community grew in 1639 as a result of large migration waves, the Ashkenazi congregation was formally and legally established.Footnote 24 This was done out of necessity, since by then the Ashkenazim had been excluded from services in the Portuguese synagogue.Footnote 25 By 1640, the Ashkenazi community consisted of approximately 500 members.Footnote 26
The Ashkenazim were still highly dependent on the Portuguese community throughout the seventeenth century. Nevertheless, in 1639 they managed to rent a building from the Portuguese to be used as a synagogue, and to purchase land in Muiderberg for their own cemetery.Footnote 27 During the following decades of the seventeenth century, the community grew due to migration waves from Ukraine (Chmielnicki, 1640–1650), Poland and Lithuania (Swedish-Polish war, 1655–1660).Footnote 28 In 1675, there were about 1,830 Ashkenazim in Amsterdam, and in 1700, this number had grown to about 3,200.Footnote 29
From its establishment, the divided Ashkenazi community faced repeated governance and legitimacy challenges, frequently requiring the assistance of the Portuguese communal leaders, the municipality, and other authorities. Tensions were related to elections, finances, and the balance of authority between the Parnasim and rabbis.Footnote 30 At first, when the community was young,Footnote 31 community members were more involved in the decision-making processes. Yet, once the community grew in the early eighteenth century, it also became more oligarchic.Footnote 32 From then on, only a few wealthy, educated members could participate in the decision-making process.Footnote 33 Decision-making was carried out by majority vote among this narrow group of elites and taxpayers until the early nineteenth century. This led to ongoing tensions between the poor majority and the oligarchic Parnasim, as well as among the Parnasim themselves.Footnote 34 It was not unusual for these tensions to escalate into fist fights in the synagogue.Footnote 35 The Parnasim reluctantly had to rely on assistance from the Portuguese community and the municipality of Amsterdam to cope with these disagreements.Footnote 36
As a core communal institution, the meat hall was a recurring topic of discussion between the Parnasim and individuals within the community. The meat hall management did not apply a discursive governance process, and neither the government nor the community were involved in decision-making processes on a regular basis, but only in times of crisis. Another challenge was that the Parnasim’s tended to solve as many intra-communal issues as possible independently, so as to protect their own authority and the positive image of the community.Footnote 37 This retention of power was probably meant to avoid excess interference by the municipality, yet in the long run, it might have contributed to the demise of the Hall.Footnote 38
From the sixteenth century, European charity became more institutionalized, standardized, and centrally administered by communities. In large parts of Germany, for example, charity and welfare shifted from clerical to municipal control during the early modern times.Footnote 39 This development is also apparent in the welfare organization of Ashkenazi Amsterdam. Welfare institutions were often related to other aspects of communal life.Footnote 40
The Ashkenazi meat hall in Amsterdam is a prime example of these institutionalization processes. Around 1640, community members asked the Ashkenazi leadership to set a fixed price for kosher meat. Discussions on the feasibility of having a specific Jewish meat market led to the foundation of the communal, central meat hall and the community was obliged to purchase kosher meat exclusively there.Footnote 41 The meat hall was an attempt to improve the financial ability of the Ashkenazi community to support its own poor, by imposing an indirect meat tax. This tax, alongside contributions at the synagogue and communal tax ( Biljetten ), was used to maintain the communal welfare system.Footnote 42
Communal Regulations and Governance
Daily life in Ashkenazi Amsterdam was governed by communal regulations. The communal regulations published between 1658 and 1737 reveal persistent intra-communal tensions—and represent an attempt to manage them. As poor Ashkenazim arrived in waves of mass migration, the community grew, and intra-communal tensions regarding prayer style, finances, and elections became unbearable.Footnote 43
The first regulation of 1658 already reflects tensions regarding payments of charitable donations upon receiving an honorary function at the synagogue. After three warnings, members who still refused to pay would be excommunicated. A similar principle is applied in the second regulation: those who were officially summoned to the Parnasim and refused to appear three times would be excommunicated, and in the third regulation, which concerns the rent for synagogue pews.Footnote 44 Regulation number 4 mentions the obligation of community members to consume only meat slaughtered in the official communal slaughterhouse. Members were not allowed to slaughter or sell meat independently, even before the municipality formally granted the meat hall a monopoly status in 1672.Footnote 45 Regulation number 5 relates to public conflicts and disturbances at the synagogue, which were abundant according to notarial deeds from the same period.Footnote 46
The regulations of 1672 reconfirm the ones of 1658, with two supplements. The first is related to the profits from the meat hall, which were meant exclusively for the poor fund. The second supplement from 1672 elaborates on the consequences of inability to pay for synagogue pews.Footnote 47
The two sets of regulations from 1658 and 1672 reflect how the Parnassim developed the administration and regulation of the community. They also reveal a consistent tendency to enforce the desired behavior through coercion and punishments, including fines, public humiliation, bans, and excommunication. This behavior was already supported by the municipal authorities during the seventeenth century. Excommunication was an extremely severe punishment and meant de facto expulsion from the community and the city. This dependency on communal membership for legal standing gave the Parnasim near-absolute leverage over the community: during this period, Jews were required to belong to a recognized community in order to hold legal status in the Dutch Republic.Footnote 48
In the eighteenth century, these tensions did not subside. The regulations and protocols of the Ashkenazi community during the eighteenth century reveal fierce disagreements related to funds, prayer style, and leadership elections. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, there were many arguments about the prayer style at the synagogue between the Ashkenazim and the Polish Jews, resulting in physical altercations. In 1709, the chief Rabbi suffered a stroke during a fist fight in the synagogue. He died two months later. In 1710, another fierce argument, regarding the term of office of chief Rabbi “Hacham Zvi,” led to the dismissal of two Parnasim by the municipality in May 1710.Footnote 49 The regulations of 1711 reflect these and similar rifts well. They open with a decision to abolish all bans, and to end all arguments in front of the Holy Ark in the synagogue.Footnote 50 The new regulations of 1711, written with the support of the Portuguese community and in cooperation with the municipality, were meant to resolve these ongoing tensions and were more elaborate than the previous versions.
In addition, the regulations of 1711 include minute instructions on the elections of the officials, progressive taxation, the authority to collect and spend funds, and financial accounting. Yet these regulations were still too concise and contained unclear definitions, leading to further disagreements related to the financial management of the community and the election of officials.Footnote 51 In 1737, new regulations were published for the same reasons. Similar to the previous regulations, the municipality and Portuguese community were involved in drafting those of 1737.Footnote 52 These regulations were twice as long, due to elaborated details and definitions to increase the clarity and prevent rifts within the Ashkenazi community.Footnote 53 They remained in use until 1808.Footnote 54
The regulations, published in Yiddish, were probably known to individuals within the community.Footnote 55 The importance of the meat hall is visible throughout the regulations of the Ashkenazi community.Footnote 56 Detailed instructions are reminiscent of multiple disputes on price, quality, Kashrut, the process of appointing the hall managers and supervisors, and the reliability of the hall servants. These documents provide a unique glimpse into the daily routine of a communal organization in early modern times.
During the eighteenth century, daily life continued to be intensively managed by the Parnasim, with the implicit or explicit backing of the municipal government. Most individuals within the community held a lower status ( Toshav or Oreach —resident or guest), with limited welfare rights, no synagogue pew, and no voting or election privileges. This group received the most poor relief.Footnote 57 The Parnasim, supported by Amsterdam’s municipality, wielded near-absolute authority within the community. They did so using an informal network of informants who were financially dependent on them for their employment. These informants were responsible for ensuring that community members lived according to the Halacha rules.Footnote 58 The communal meat hall reflects these trends well, since many offenses related to it and subsequent punishments are documented in detail in the communal protocol books.Footnote 59
These coercive mechanisms intensified during the eighteenth century, similar to other communities.Footnote 60 The Parnasim could deny community members rights and honors in the synagogue, prevent them from entering the synagogue, cancel communal memberships, bury members outside the cemetery borders, and collect taxes via the municipal mechanism. Individuals within the community were not allowed to pray in a Minyan (a group of at least 10 men) outside the synagogue without explicit permission from the Parnasim.Footnote 61
Jews were forbidden from forming separate communities and remained under Parnasim authority until around 1796. Even after this date, several years passed before political changes resulted in new communal policies.Footnote 62 In 1796, a general process of separation of religion and state began under the Batavian Republic. The Jews formally received equal rights as citizens, and gradually this right was also translated to daily life.
When the Batavian Republic was established in 1795, the municipality collected contributions for the poor of the city and divided them between the different groups.Footnote 63 The Ashkenazi community received about 28 percent of the sum.Footnote 64 As a result of the gradual separation between religion and state, the Parnasim gradually lost their influence over finance and welfare within their own religious community, and the communal regulations were no longer comparable with municipal regulations. Formally, citizens were free to join and establish communities from then on, yet the municipal authorities still supported the Parnasim in enforcing their authority over the community until the beginning of the nineteenth century.Footnote 65
Data Sources
In order to achieve a comprehensive, longitudinal view of the meat hall’s legitimacy dynamics, we conducted a thematic analysis of diverse archival materials. Our primary data sources were the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Ashkenazi community regulations, specifically a few of the regulations from 1658 (5 regulations),Footnote 66 and some dated 1672 (7 regulations),Footnote 67 alongside the complete regulations from 1711 (112 regulations) and 1737 (103 regulations). These codices of Ashkenazi life in Amsterdam included directives related to the meat hall and broader community management aspects.
Furthermore, we compared these regulations with two sets of summary protocols of the community management, offering insights into daily Jewish community life in Amsterdam:
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1. 380 protocols (1708–1807) (Tal 2010, 81–82).
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2. 4,590 protocol summary records (1737–1808) (Amsterdam Municipal Archive [CAA]), translated by Jits van Straten.
These (summary records of) protocols reveal aspects of the meat hall only hinted at in the regulations, including fraudulent activities like forged kosher stamps and the sale of unfresh meat by hall officials.Footnote 68
The third unique source is a documentation of 79 records directly related to the meat hall written by the community and the Dutch government between 1639 and 1873.Footnote 69 This collection appeared in a series of journal articles in the Dutch Jewish magazine De Vrijdagavond (Dutch for Friday evening) of 1929. These records include citations of formal decisions and letters. Some of the originals were lost in the holocaust but partially preserved here by David Mozes Sluys. The findings below are presented in a chronological and narrative form.
Organizational Legitimacy
Studying a historical reality using social science lenses often leads to new perspectives and additional nuanced insights, since the lenses provide another layer of analysis. To achieve such another layer, we study the Ashkenazi lay leadership using Suchman’s lens of organizational legitimacy, focusing on the meat hall.
Suchman’s seminal framework has been predominant in studies on legitimacy, particularly for communal organizations.Footnote 70 Applying Suchman’s framework to the Ashkenazi meat hall leads to a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanisms and dynamics related to this communal institute. According to Suchman, “legitimacy is a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs and definitions.”Footnote 71 In other words, legitimacy provides an organization with a right of existence. An organization perceived as legitimate has a credible rationale of what it is doing and why.Footnote 72
This definition hints at the dynamic nature of legitimacy in the long term, as social perceptions reshape throughout time. Ashforth and Gibbs define legitimacy similarly, and discuss its problematic nature due to possible tensions between social norms and expectations.Footnote 73 This demonstrates the complexity in studying legitimacy of organizations. Since such complex dynamics can play out over a longer period and tend to change over time, longitudinal studies allow studying legitimacy in depth,Footnote 74 and gain a deeper understanding of patterns.
Once it is noticed that an organization considerably diverges from social norms, its legitimacy can be damaged. Such damage in turn impairs the stability of the organization, as society supplies it with less and less resources. Moreover, organizations can require passive or active support by specific audiences. The threshold of legitimacy is in accordance with the level of support an organization requires.Footnote 75
Suchman defines three types of organizational legitimacy, each stemming from another behavioral dynamic.Footnote 76 These are pragmatic, moral, and cognitive legitimacy. Legitimacy can be given by either the community in which the organization is active—so-called internal legitimacy—or by society at large and the government—external legitimacy.Footnote 77 In order to survive and thrive, an organization must gain, preserve, and sometimes repairFootnote 78 both its internal and external legitimacy. The pragmatic, moral, and cognitive legitimacy of an entity can therefore be analyzed both internally and externally. As will be shown, internal and external legitimacy played a pivotal role in the initial survival and ultimate demise of the meat hall.
The first form of legitimacy is pragmatic legitimacy. Pragmatic legitimacy is similar to moral legitimacy in the sense that they are both based on discursive evaluation and public discussions, whereas cognitive legitimacy “implicates unspoken orienting assumptions.”Footnote 79 Yet, pragmatic legitimacy is easier to achieve than moral and cognitive legitimacy since it stems from utility calculations and can be achieved by providing “tangible rewards to specific constituencies.”Footnote 80 By contrast, moral and cognitive legitimacy imply broader cultural rules and cannot easily be acquired by providing such tangible rewards to stakeholders. When progressing from the pragmatic to the moral and cognitive, legitimacy “becomes more subtle, more profound, and more self-sustaining.”Footnote 81
Moral legitimacy is similar to Aldrich and Fiol’s definition of socio-political legitimacy: “the process by which key stakeholders, the general public, key opinion leaders, or government officials accept a venture as appropriate and right, given existing norms and law.”Footnote 82 The core question behind moral legitimacy is whether the activities of an organization promote societal welfare according to the value system of a group. Moral legitimacy can be measured by evaluating outputs and consequences and procedures and techniques.Footnote 83
Cognitive legitimacy stems from cultural models providing “plausible explanations for the organization and its endeavors,” making it appear necessary or inevitable. Based on these models, organizational activities seem meaningful and predictable.Footnote 84 However, cognitive legitimacy is more difficult to achieve than pragmatic and moral legitimacy, which are based on explicit discussions and evaluations.Footnote 85 Cognitive legitimacy, by contrast, rests on unspoken assumptions, and vigorous defenses of organizational activities can actually undermine the perceived objectivity of these taken-for-granted beliefs.Footnote 86
When suitable cultural models exist, the activities of an organization are perceived as “predictable, meaningful and inviting.”Footnote 87 Without such models, activities will falter, not necessarily due to outright opposition, but often due to recurring misinterpretations, oversights, and loss of focus.Footnote 88 Moreover, new organizations, such as the Ashkenazi meat hall, face difficulties in gaining cognitive legitimacy, which is crucial to enjoy government protection.Footnote 89 The following sections explore how these three forms of legitimacy played a prominent role in the history and ultimate demise of the meat hall.
Case Analysis
Analyzing the legitimacy of the Ashkenazi Parnasim, as reflected in the meat hall, through Suchman’s framework reveals three phases:Footnote 90 (1) 1673–1736, establishment and institutionalization, characterized by eroding pragmatic legitimacy; (2) 1737–1790, standardization, accountability, and soaring poverty, declining moral legitimacy; and (3) 1790–1815, decentralization and reorganization, due to gradual loss of cognitive legitimacy.Footnote 91
During the first phase (1673–1736), recurring intra-communal tensions, which began with the formation of the community around 1640, continued.Footnote 92 These affected the legitimacy of the meat hall from its establishment: only 110 of about 220 community members signed the decision to establish the meat hall as a monopoly, and some distinguished members did not sign.Footnote 93 This indicates that as early as 1673, part of the community found the hall’s rationale unconvincing. Ashforth and Gibbs mention that initial weak legitimacy can contribute to difficulties in gaining legitimacy, leading to a vicious circle,Footnote 94 something that can also have played a role in the meat hall.
Throughout the first phase, there is evidence of ongoing violations of the monopoly,Footnote 95 eroding the pragmatic legitimacy of the hall in the eyes of community members, and as a result, in the eyes of the municipality.Footnote 96 A combination of many warnings against buying meat elsewhere, bans, and public humiliations for offenders was used to induce desired behavior of individuals within the community.Footnote 97 After 1711, punishments became harsher,Footnote 98 a trend which also reflected a further decline in the internal legitimacy of the meat hall.
The Parnasim positioned the Ashkenazi meat hall within the institutional regime of the Portuguese community. The Portuguese meat hall existed before the Ashkenazi one, and many procedures and principles of the Ashkenazi hall were heavily influenced by it.Footnote 99 Aldrich and Fiol found that founders of new organizations inherently lack the established reputation and trust that facilitates basic business interactions.Footnote 100 To gain legitimacy through conformity, managers can align their organization within a “preexisting institutional regime.”Footnote 101 This can be done by “conforming to established models or standards,” meaning imitating the most well-known entities in the field.Footnote 102 Yet the Portuguese community also had difficulties preserving the monopoly of their meat hall.Footnote 103 These difficulties can explain why adopting the preexisting Portuguese institutional regime presumably only had a limited impact on the legitimacy of the Ashkenazi meat hall.
Aldrich and Fiol also note that new organizations face difficulties demonstrating tangible evidence to their stakeholders.Footnote 104 As a result, the latter cannot easily judge the possible trade-offs and risks of supporting the organization. Furthermore, symbolic communication, charismatic leadership, and rhetorical techniques can also strengthen the legitimacy of organizations.Footnote 105 The meat hall was a new organization, within a new and divided community. It was therefore probably an immense challenge for it to gain trust and legitimacy from the community members. Since the community could not be convinced that meat hall’s monopoly was necessary, the municipality gradually also doubted its legitimacy. Naturally, modern knowledge on charismatic leadership and rhetoric was not yet available in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Hence, the Parnasim could not make use of these techniques.
By appealing to a shared bond with followers, even when violating established values, organization leaders can preserve societal trust and credibility and cultivate empathy.Footnote 106 This can be achieved through regular community consultations and implementing transparent guidelines that balance stakeholders’ diverse needs.Footnote 107 In addition, organizations can accumulate goodwill and support to maintain legitimacy. Characteristically pragmatic stockpiles are related to trust. Unfortunately, throughout the studied period, the meat hall was faced with (dis)trust issues. The communication style used by the Parnasim, namely coercion and emotional appeals, did not result in creating sufficient resilient community bonds, cultivating empathy, demonstrating social impact, or accumulating good will. This limited the legitimacy and community support of the meat hall. As a result of the Parnasim’s rigid and formal communication with the community, they lacked stakeholder engagement which presumably could have strengthened their social status and the legitimacy of the meat hall.
Pragmatic legitimacy is extremely relevant for studying the Ashkenazi meat hall throughout the studied period, and especially during the first stage. This is because of the practical importance of the hall for the communal welfare system, religious identity, and proper relations with the municipality of Amsterdam.Footnote 108 Over the years, the pragmatic legitimacy of the meat hall was challenged because of a rigid management style, questionable ability to answer the basic needs of the direct stakeholders, and inadequate communication with community members and the municipality. This process began with the establishment of the hall and is already apparent in the recurring violations of the monopoly during the first period. Lack of symbolic communication, charismatic leadership, and rhetorical techniques further affected the pragmatic legitimacy of the Hall.
Since the communal leaders found it difficult to maintain the monopoly of the meat hall, they were forced to request the assistance of the municipal authorities on a case-by-case basis. These authorities often intervened to mediate quarrels between Ashkenazim among themselves, and between Ashkenazim and guild members.Footnote 109 Such incidents shamed the whole community, risked its good name, and weakened the authority and all three sorts of legitimacy of the meat hall. Consequently, they were punished firmly by the Parnasim.Footnote 110
During the first period, moral and cognitive legitimacy, albeit not deeply rooted, were relatively stable. Yet since the Parnasim struggled to maintain the pragmatic legitimacy of the meat hall from its inception, moral and cognitive legitimacy were also challenging to maintain and strengthen in the long run.
During the second phase (1737–1790), there were efforts to improve the standardization of the hall, as reflected in the regulations of 1737 and in decisions documented in the communal register books. Yet throughout this period, there were still repeated violations of the monopoly of the meat hall. Although the Parnasim also published multiple warnings during this period, and punishments became even more severe, it seems like the pragmatic legitimacy of the hall in particular was further diminished by its direct stakeholders. The most severe punishments were refusal to bury a deceased child and excommunication.
In 1740, Tzadok ben Abraham smuggled unkosher meat and fat from Vienna. The Parnasim imposed a fine and required public forgiveness. Due to a lack of cooperation, the Parnasim threatened not to bury his son, who had recently passed away, in the Ashkenazi cemetery. Refusal to bury in the cemetery was one of the harshest punishments imposed by the community leadership.Footnote 111 The second severe case dates to 1758, when a woman named Hendele purchased unkosher meat from a foreign slaughterer and intentionally allowed her family and additional community members to eat it, not knowing it was unkosher. She was imprisoned for six months by the municipal authorities and excommunicated from Amsterdam for the remainder of her life.Footnote 112
These harsh punishments testify to the Parnasim’s difficulties in maintaining their pragmatic legitimacy. While they viewed punishment as an efficient mechanism to induce desired behavior, in the long run this approach, alongside their limited communication, eroded their legitimacy rather than strengthened it.
An additional challenge during this period, especially between 1764 and 1790, was soaring poverty within the community.Footnote 113 It can therefore be presumed that the meat hall also gradually lost its moral legitimacy since it could not sufficiently support the poor within the community. The meat hall’s moral legitimacy was derived from its dual role as the primary funding source for the communal welfare system and as the guarantor of Jewish religious observance through kosher meat provision in accordance with Halacha. Moral legitimacy constitutes a “positive normative evaluation of the organization and its activities.”Footnote 114 It is based on a wide prosocial logic.
In terms of outputs and consequences, or what it accomplished, the meat hall substantially supported the communal welfare system throughout the eighteenth century. Yet the welfare system still struggled due to recurrent waves of poor Ashkenazim from eastern Europe. Individuals within the community had to pay a high price for the meat: up to three times higher than non-kosher meat.Footnote 115 The indirect taxation system of the meat, although well meant, resulted in the aforementioned repeated violations of the hall monopoly.Footnote 116 It is therefore questionable to what extent the outputs and consequences were moral.
Regarding procedures and techniques, an organization can gain moral legitimacy by adopting “socially accepted techniques and procedures.”Footnote 117 Such procedures can promote trust by stakeholders and hence strengthen the moral legitimacy of organizations.Footnote 118 The meat hall management endeavored to improve the procedures related to elections of officials and finance of the hall, as seen in the regulations of 1737 compared with those from 1711.Footnote 119 This was done to demonstrate that the organization was making an honest effort to act ethically.Footnote 120 The detailed instructions regarding the hall officials, their elections, and appointment conditions reflect accountability, reliability, transparency, and above all, the Halacha . They could have served a double purpose when maintaining and strengthening the moral legitimacy of the meat hall.
Yet in the case of the meat hall, the instructions and regulations were insufficient to guarantee the prevailing internal, and as a result external, moral legitimacy. Repeated rifts and violations of the hall monopoly reveal the dissatisfaction of parts of the community with practical issues related to the community management.Footnote 121 This internal dissatisfaction led to additional procedures, which in the long term damaged the external moral legitimacy of the hall, since the municipality doubted the ability of the meat hall to promote societal welfare.
From a religious perspective, the hall enabled the Parnasim to control the kosher lifestyle of community members. This was morally desired, since adhering to the Halacha allowed the communal Jewish identity to be preserved. Yet this was done rigidly and without communicating with individuals within the community about their developing needs and worldviews. The regulations from 1711 define the conditions for slaughtering and consuming meat,Footnote 122 and those of 1737 include additional specific details of kashrut and punishments for violation of the monopoly.Footnote 123 Throughout most of the studied period, this lack of communication was tolerated by community members and did not substantially affect the internal legitimacy of the meat hall. However, eventually the coercive treatment of signs of secularization and modernization within the community culminated in the establishment of the new Ashkenazi community in 1797.Footnote 124
It is also questionable to what extent the Parnasim were favoring status and power over openness to discuss ethical issues in order to protect the communal reputation and proper relations with the local authorities.Footnote 125 Palazzo and Scherer argue that deliberative communication through reasonable argumentation is preferable to manipulation.Footnote 126 Hence, the doubtful prosocial logic and limited communication about the meat hall with the community are likely to have contributed to the deterioration of moral legitimacy.
A clear moral legitimacy strategy of organizations involves producing “concrete, meritorious outcomes”Footnote 127 according to the “existing norms and laws,” so that the organization will be perceived as “appropriate and right.”Footnote 128 This is parallel to gaining pragmatic legitimacy by “satisfying constituent tastes.”Footnote 129 Although the meat hall became the core income source of the communal welfare system by imposing the indirect meat tax, this achievement was probably not perceived as meritorious. The welfare system was unable to support the needs of the many poor migrants, a problem which became more severe during the second phaseFootnote 130 (1737–1790), and especially between 1764 and 1790.Footnote 131
The high meat price led many poor to purchase meat leftovers.Footnote 132 These circumstances damaged the perceived moral legitimacy of the meat hall, since it is questionable to what extent the hall was able to fulfill its role of supporting the welfare system, as well as providing meat to community members. One can wonder, if most of the community, who were poor Ashkenazim, were unable to purchase meat at the hall, how (morally) justified its existence was. The community faced a persistent welfare crisis, exacerbated by an influx of impoverished Ashkenazim into Amsterdam. Many poor suffered from hunger and lacked basic necessities such as clothing.Footnote 133
The violations of the monopoly increased during this second phase—and this trend continued into the third phase (1790–1815), as we will see later on.Footnote 134 Multiple inspections concluded that the Portuguese meat hall sold better meat, and that the Christian butchers sold the best quality of meat.Footnote 135 The problem with the quality presumably stemmed from the endeavor of the Parnasim to sell the lowest quality for the highest price,Footnote 136 to maximize the profit for the welfare system. Although this was a noble reason, it further damaged the pragmatic legitimacy of the hall, which had already been under pressure since the first phase, and consecutively, also its moral legitimacy. Community members were probably frustrated by the low quality and high price throughout the studied period, leading to recurring violations of the monopoly. Additionally, the Jewish butchers depended on their Christian counterparts for the meat supply, and these did not always supply the best quality.Footnote 137
However, the moral and pragmatic legitimacy of the meat hall was not affected by meat quality alone. The protocols document cases of hall employees who weighed improperly and demanded inconsistent prices. The Parnasim were trying to cope with these ethical challenges by forming procedures for proper governance, combined with religious ceremonies. For example, in 1758, meat sellers from the hall were required to vow in front of the holy ark in the synagogue that they would weigh properly and honestly. The meat had to be weighed (again) before being sold, to examine if the weight was (still) correct. When Jacob Hakker, one of the sellers, violated the vow, he was punished by being partially excommunicated from the community for thirty days.Footnote 138 Such punishments against hall workers were also meant to deter others, and signal to individuals within the community that ethical breaches were being taken seriously by the Parnasim.
Attempts to enhance the clarity of the regulations in 1737 to ensure proper governance did not solve these issues sufficiently. The challenges posed by the quality, quantity, origin, and price of the meat weakened the external and internal pragmatic legitimacy of the meat hall. Repeated incidents of misconductFootnote 139 testify to its weak internal pragmatic legitimacy. Such misconducts of hall workers damaged the pragmatic legitimacy because exchanges with constituents were not consistent and predictable. This can cause increased scrutiny and damage the message of business as usual.Footnote 140
Coercion is almost never a “productive legitimacy maintenance strategy,” since it is ethically questionable and gradually undermines objectivity.Footnote 141 By overly treating the violators of the monopoly as threats to the communal identity, the welfare system and the relations with the municipality, the Parnasim validated the opposition and weakened the pragmatic and moral legitimacy of the meat hall.Footnote 142 This attitude intensified between the first (1673–1736) and the second (1737–1790) phase, and to some extent also between the second and third (1790–1815) phase.Footnote 143 As a result of the weakened pragmatic and moral legitimacy, the cognitive legitimacy of the hall also began to erode towards the end of the second phase. By the late 1780s, the cumulative erosion of pragmatic and moral legitimacy had left the meat hall increasingly vulnerable to external shocks.
During the third phase (1790–1815), the violations of the monopoly substantially increased compared with the previous phases.Footnote 144 Moreover, the meat hall was exposed to an external shock due to changing perceptions regarding civil rights and separation of religion and state.Footnote 145 New perceptions gradually enabled individuals to make their own choices, as opposed to the traditional oligarchic structure of the Ashkenazi community.Footnote 146 These changing socio-political perceptions proved particularly damaging because the hall’s pragmatic and moral legitimacy were already severely weakened by persistent smuggling, quality complaints, and the welfare system’s failure to adequately support the poor.
The Ashkenazim slowly became less dependent on their communal membership, and the Parnasim lost their cognitive legitimacy to subject community members to strict social control, for example via the monopolized meat hall. The municipality supported the hall until cultural perceptions substantially shifted in the late eighteenth century and the external cognitive legitimacy of the meat hall deteriorated.Footnote 147 The separation of religion and state resulted in substantial organizational changes within the community, and a gradual loss of the internal and external cognitive legitimacy of the centralized, monopolized meat hall.Footnote 148
Cognitive legitimacy rests on unspoken cultural assumptions that make an institution appear necessary or inevitable.Footnote 149 Unlike pragmatic and moral legitimacy, which are debated explicitly, cognitive legitimacy depends on taken-for-granted beliefs. Paradoxically, vigorously defending an institution can undermine this objectivity.Footnote 150 The Parnasim’s recurring warnings, punishments, and announcements about the meat hall—even read in the synagogue twice yearly—may therefore have gradually weakened its cognitive legitimacy by drawing attention to its being contested rather than inevitable.
Taken-for-granted legitimacy makes it almost inconceivable to have things differently. As Suchman explains, “if alternatives become unthinkable, challenges become impossible.”Footnote 151 Such taken-for-grantedness is rare, but if achieved it is the strongest source of legitimacy.Footnote 152 At the establishment of the Ashkenazi meat hall, it did have a unique monopoly status as the only meat provider for the community. This was made possible because there was a strong match between the goals of the key stakeholders: the municipality wanted to prevent meat smuggling, which damaged taxation, and possibly to demonstrate tolerance toward the Ashkenazi Jewish minority.
The Parnasim wanted to ensure adherence to Halacha laws and preservation of the Jewish identity. They also wanted to sustain proper relations with the municipality, to become independent from the Portuguese community, and to maintain their own institutions. Alternatives were therefore unthinkable in spite of ongoing tensions within the community, especially due to the Halacha laws requiring kosher slaughter and strict social control by the Parnasim.
Despite its tenuous taken-for-granted legitimacy, the Ashkenazi meat hall persisted until the late eighteenth century due to a lack of conceivable alternatives. Then, due to new cultural models, the silent stakeholder, the individuals within the community, received a voice and actively challenged the oligarchy.Footnote 153 When alternatives became thinkable, the disconnect and communication gap between the Parnasim and community members was beyond repair.
The Demise of the Centralized Meat Hall
The third phase is characterized by weaker authority of the Parnasim and communal regulations and a gradual loss of punishment mechanisms. Punishments, public shaming, and bans became less effective over time, especially during this phaseFootnote 154 (1790–1815). During this stage, the Parnasim used more emotional appeals to induce the desired behavior of respecting the monopoly of the meat hall. However, by then, the legitimacy of the hall was beyond repair. The Parnasim’s communication strategy may inadvertently have undermined the meat hall’s cognitive legitimacy. They relied primarily on direct appeals and coercion—warnings, punishments, and emotional pleas—rather than cultivating a sense of shared understanding with community members.
Yet, as Suchman notes, “any overt attention—including supportive attention—may have the detrimental side effect of problematizing comprehensibility and disrupting taken-for-grantedness.”Footnote 155 By constantly defending and enforcing the monopoly, the Parnasim drew attention to it as a contested arrangement rather than an inevitable one. Interactive communication and explanation might have built stronger bonds with the community.Footnote 156 Instead, their top-down approach prevented them from building the kind of shared understanding that presumably could have weathered changing perceptions of religion, state authority, and civil rights.Footnote 157
Despite the high level of familiarity and social control within the dense Ashkenazi neighborhood,Footnote 158 the Parnasim failed to anticipate the immense external shock of the late eighteenth century. The archival record is overwhelmingly one-directional: communications flowed from the leadership to community members, with no evidence of open discussion about the meat hall and its activities. The recurrent violations of the monopoly throughout the hall’s existence suggest individuals within the community may have viewed the Parnasim’s repeated warnings, regulations, and announcements, even read in the synagogue twice yearly, with cynicism. The more the leadership codified and enforced their legitimacy claims, the more these efforts may have signaled that something was fundamentally wrong.
By the late eighteenth century, political upheaval sealed the fate of the centralized meat hall. The municipality of Amsterdam ceased its support,Footnote 159 making it impossible to punish violations of the monopoly. From 1796, Jews could choose where to purchase meat, and the Parnasim gradually lost their external legitimacy and enforcement mechanisms. The Parnasim were dismissed in March 1798 due to a regime change in the Batavian Republic, then reinstated in June 1798 for another decade.Footnote 160 From April 1815, meat from the decentralized hall was sold at the normal municipal tariff.Footnote 161 The hall was no longer an income source for the Ashkenazi welfare system.
The municipality’s withdrawal of support stemmed from new perceptions, particularly the separation of religion and state. This decoupled the hall from the community’s religious authorities, and the monopoly collapsed. The hall could no longer function as a centralized organ to prevent smuggling in cooperation with the municipality. The Parnasim’s rigidity made adaptation impossible. They viewed preserving their oligarchic control as essential to the community’s survival, a perspective typical of Ashkenazi communities in the eighteenth century but increasingly at odds with emerging ideals of individualism and civil rights.
The meat hall’s fundamental purpose, ensuring strict adherence to Halacha laws while maintaining the welfare system and relations with the municipality, could not be reconciled with the separation of religion and state. When these external disruptions occurred, the hall, lacking deep roots in communal consensus, could no longer be seen as necessary or inevitable. The rigidity of the Parnasim in combination with their lack of communication toward community members and the municipality led to the final collapse of the hall’s legitimacy. Already weakened, the pragmatic and moral legitimacy, combined with the erosion of cognitive legitimacy, left no foundation upon which the institution could survive.
Conclusion
The meat hall’s legitimacy was contested even before its formal establishment. Already in 1658 and 1672, regulations attempted to address tensions over meat provision,Footnote 162 foreshadowing the persistent challenges that would plague the institution. The records from 1673 onwards show that internal opposition manifested itself through persistent meat smuggling, reflecting low trust in the Parnasim’s leadership. Yet the institution survived over a century because it served essential functions: it enabled the community to maintain Jewish dietary laws and provided a revenue stream for welfare. It also demonstrated to Amsterdam’s authorities that the Jewish minority could police itself while contributing to municipal tax revenues.
The archival sources reflect the low pragmatic legitimacy of the meat hall throughout all three periods (1673–1736, 1737–1790, and 1790–1815): time and time again, community members smuggled meat from elsewhere, defying the monopoly.Footnote 163 These actions presumably reflected their dissatisfaction with the quality and price of the meat.Footnote 164 Due to the rigidity of the management, the meat hall gradually became less legitimate and lost the enforcement mechanisms to maintain its monopoly status. It required active support from both the community and the municipality. Once pragmatic legitimacy began to erode, support from these direct stakeholders gradually diminished, resulting in a vicious circle which ultimately led to alternatives being more acceptable, further eroding cognitive legitimacy.
The hall also struggled with moral legitimacy. Although it became the primary income source for the communal welfare system through the indirect meat tax, this achievement was not perceived as meritorious. The welfare system remained unable to support the needs of many poor migrants, a problem that worsened especially between 1764 and 1790. High meat prices—up to three times higher than non-kosher meat—forced many poor to purchase leftovers, damaging the hall’s moral standing. This was perceived as failure to deliver tangible welfare outcomes. Combined with rigid governance that favored hierarchy and preserving positive communal reputation over ethical dialogue, it eroded the hall’s moral legitimacy among both community members and municipal authorities.
The meat hall’s dual role, welfare provision and identity preservation, worked only within a specific political framework where religious and civic authority were intertwined. The Parnasim’s oligarchic control, coercive communication, and inflexible adherence to their vision left no room for adaptation when that framework shifted. During the eighteenth century, socio-political norms changed and the Parnasim could not adjust their governance style. Their constant warnings, punishments, and announcements ironically drew attention to the meat hall as contested rather than inevitable, damaging cognitive legitimacy.
The centralized monopoly model became untenable after the separation of religion and state in the early nineteenth century, combined with new concepts of individual civil rights. The municipality withdrew its support, and without enforcement mechanisms, the Ashkenazi meat hall finally lost its monopoly status in 1808. From April 1815 meat was sold at the normal municipal tariff, marking the complete dissolution of the hall as a communal welfare instrument.
The Ashkenazi meat hall’s demise symbolized a broader transformation in how religious minorities related to the state. What had been a pragmatic arrangement, religious autonomy in exchange for self-governance, became incompatible with emerging liberal ideals. The case demonstrates how institutions designed for one societal paradigm cannot simply be reformed when fundamental assumptions about religion, state, and citizenship change. The hall did not fail due to mismanagement alone; it failed because the world it was built for had ceased to exist.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Sanne van Loosen for her invaluable help and support.
Funding statement
Open access funding provided by Erasmus University Rotterdam.
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